POLITICAL COLUMN

Dan Balz pens searing indictment of 2012

Here is Jim Messina, Barack Obama’s campaign manager, explaining to Dan Balz how he intends to run the 2012 campaign:

“My favorite political philosopher is Mike Tyson,” Messina says. “Mike Tyson once said everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don’t have a plan anymore. [The Republicans] may have a plan to beat my guy. My job is to punch them in the face.”

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Here is Tagg Romney, Mitt Romney’s son, telling Balz that his father was not quite fired up and ready to go less than three weeks before he announced his candidacy. “He was hoping for an exit,” Tagg says. “I think he wanted to have an excuse not to run.” During the Christmas holiday of 2010, the Romney family had gathered in Hawaii and voted on whether Romney should run. Ten of the 12 family members voted no. Mitt Romney was among the no votes.

Here is Chris Christie, governor of New Jersey, still undecided about his own candidacy. He orders those Republicans who had decided to run not to troll for support or money in his state. It was like something out of “The Sopranos.” Jersey was his territory. “Governor Romney didn’t like that too much,” Christie tells Balz.

Nancy Reagan sends a handwritten note inviting Christie to give a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California. Christie shows up, he is seated on the stage and Nancy Reagan leans over to him and points out the podium from which he will speak. “That was one of Ronnie’s podiums from the White House,” she says. Christie tells Balz: “I sat there for a second, and I just turned to her and I said, ‘You’re bad, you know that?’ She had this big smile on her face.”

Here is Ron Kaufman, one of Romney’s top advisers, on election night after Romney’s defeat, sitting in a nearly empty staff room after Romney has made a gracious concession call to Obama and a concession speech. Romney walks into the staff room. “This is scary,” Romney says. “This is a bad thing for the country.”

I could go on and on. Balz’s new book, “Collision 2012: Obama vs. Romney and the Future of Elections in America,” is so full of anecdotes and revelations that it is hard to stop. But I will. Because even though I think this is one of the best political books I have ever read, harkening back to the “Making of the President” books in terms of its richness of detail and analysis, it is not a collection of anecdotes.

Instead, it is a searing, unsparing indictment of America’s presidential election system and the way candidates run for office. And though Balz is the chief correspondent of The Washington Post, the press does not escape unscathed either.

He gives fair warning on the very first page. “It was not an uplifting campaign by any stretch of the imagination,” he writes. And 352 pages later, he concludes that the campaign was rarely about ideas or issues. Obama and Romney had a different agenda. Balz writes: “Each pursued a strategy designed for one thing: winning.”

Balz sat down for two hours at my kitchen table recently. He was no stranger to it, nor I to his. We have been friends for more than 40 years. Today and tomorrow, I will present the highlights of our conversation.